


Star Child

by bookjunkiecat



Series: Glimpses of the Heart [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alienation, Astronomy, M/M, POV Mycroft, Pining, Tattoos, misfits - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-15
Updated: 2018-02-15
Packaged: 2019-03-19 04:43:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13697103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookjunkiecat/pseuds/bookjunkiecat
Summary: Mycroft has a tattoo which at first glance could be dismissed as flash art. But to him it has a very deep meaning.





	Star Child

**Author's Note:**

> I originally posted this to Tumblr in late January, but I wanted to share it here, lest it be lost. Decided to add it to my February Writing Challenge series, even though I wrote it in January.

Mycroft has a very small tattoo of an alien. He’s had it since he was 19. It’s the only bit of ink on his body and not normally something he would sport. He got it, quite deliberately, and despite its rather cartoonish appearance, it wasn’t an idle selection.

He was, as one might have expected, an odd and isolated child. When he was four his fledgling friendship with the boy down the lane died an abrupt and painful death when summer ended and they met other children at school. Apparently his presence was only desirable when there were no other children around.

When he was seven he came home from school with a bloody lip. Mummy, nearly eight months pregnant, put down her book and made him tell her what had happened. It was his great intelligence, of course. They’re only jealous, Mummy had counseled, they find someone as smart as you a bit alien.

Of course, Mycroft thought… I’m an alien. It explained a lot. Why he didn’t look like Mummy or Father. Why he was so much more advanced than the other children. How he could tell when the gardener had been spending time with the cook while the family was away. Why Mrs Pilcher across the road seemed scared of him. It was why no one liked him.

He read extensively about outer space after that, teased and begged for a telescope for his birthday, spent hours on his back stating up at the sky, wondering what his home planet was like. Perhaps they would come back for him some day… His real people. His tribe.

By the time he was fourteen Mycroft didn’t really believe in alien lifeforms any longer, and of course he recognized that he was different because of his intellect and his talents. Nothing wrong with that. His time would come. It wasn’t a very comforting litany, but he employed it with enthusiasm nonetheless.

Allan was… Everything. Mycroft hadn’t quite understood the allure of love, or sex, until he met Allen. He was willing to skip lectures in favour of lying in Allan’s tiny bed. It was easy for him to help Allan with his courses, and his own work scarcely suffered. Mycroft was a private person, so he didn’t *really* mind keeping their relationship a secret. It was rather delicious to be the only ones to know about their lovely nights.

When it ended, he was devastated; everything he thought he’d known about his lover turned out to be false. He’d viewed him through the eyes of infatuation and missed all the tells. Obviously, he decided fiercely, he was not to be trusted with his heart. Better to lock it away and leave it out of the picture.

But he was…weak. His heart was a foolish and unreliable instrument. As a reminder, Mycroft finally endured a half an hour in a tattooist’s chair, emerging later with a tiny rendering of an alien over his heart. It was a cartoonish thing, rather silly. But it served its purpose.

It might have been lonely at times, but it was far preferable, he decided, to endure loneliness than heartache and loss. His pride survived intact, even if at times his arms ached with the emptiness.

And after all, most people were idiots. The occasional indulgence in sex was not worth the deadening boredom of being forced in others company.

He was forty before he met someone that challenged his ideas on the balance of probable pain against certain attraction and…emotion. But his crush was married. A neat solution to his dilemma.

When he was forty three, his crush divorced, but showed no signs of reciprocal feelings. Mycroft was weak, however, and he still summoned the man needlessly on occasion, just to be near him.

When he was forty-six, on the worst night of his life, his crush came to him.

“Mycroft?”

He looked up into DI Lestrade’s face, distantly aware that it was the first time the man had called him by his first name. “Inspector,” he had to swallow hard, throat working. The fear was still a physical presence in his chest, “Sherlock…he’s…?”

Without waiting for an invitation, Lestrade sat on the low stone wall next to him, reaching out awkwardly to adjust the shock blanket. “He is, he and John both.”

Mycroft exhaled, and looked back up at the sky. It was nearly dawn, but the stars still shone faintly, visible here the way they were not in the city. That’s good, he wanted to say, but found he dare not, for fear the emotions crowding him would emerge as tears.

Lestrade sat silently next to him, tilting back his head as well. They sat, a quiet nucleus to the swirling energy around them, watching the fading stars. At last Lestrade fumbled for his cigarettes, lit two, and passed one to Mycroft. “Feel like I haven’t seen ‘em in years…’s too many lights in London.” Mycroft felt, rather than heard, a chuckle. “Thought I’d be out amongst them, when I was a kid. I was mad for the stars… Wanted to be an explorer… Thought one day we’d colonize the stars and I’d…” He dropped his gaze and found Mycroft looking at him with wide eyes. “Thought,” he finished almost on a whisper, responding to the sudden solemnity of the moment, “I’d meet a real, proper alien. Took me years to get over the disappointment.”

Mycroft regarded him in wonder, a distant part of his mind objectively positing that he’d actually died in that holding cell and that this was a very strange afterlife.

Lestrade might have flushed a bit. “I, uh, I even got a bit of ink,” one hand came up and patted over his right pectoral. “A spaceship. Silly thing…like a cartoon.”

If they hugged, Mycroft thought, the tattoos would almost perfectly line up. Would his alien be able to at last gain access to the long-awaited spaceship?

“Anyway…” Lestrade’s voice trailed off. “They say we can go soon, and I wondered…”

“Ins- Gregory, I wonder if you might be so kind as to give me a lift to my home?” Mycroft kicked his lips, the wind snatching away the moisture right away, so that he repeated the action. Lestrade’s eyes tracked his tongue and then rose to meet his.

Oh. OH.

“A-and I find that I am quite famished,” Mycroft said, forcing himself not to look away from the gentle regard of those dark brown eyes, “P-perhaps we could… Stop for a meal?”

The other man seemed dazed, a happy smile growing on his face, “As a matter of fact, I know a great little place we can get a fine breakfast. Just the kind of place to put heart in a man.”

“Something I’ve rather been lacking for many years, it seems.”

“Oh I don’t know,” Greg Lestrade said slowly, hand coming to rest over Mycroft’s on the wall, “I wouldn’t say that.”

“On the way, I can tell you all about the stars,” Mycroft said, standing, hand turning so his palm pressed warmly to the one covering his.

Rising to stand next to him, Gregory stared for a long minute. Mycroft allowed it, encouraged it, meeting his eyes despite his rising colour. A smile began to spread over Gregory’s face, and he chucked, sounding delighted, “Is breakfast an odd meal for a first date?”

Mycroft allowed him to help him over the wall, as his legs still felt weak. His heart however…

“I think, dear Gregory, that it’s a lovely place to start.”


End file.
